One sunny March morning, freed murder convict and tireless rabble-rouser Mark Clements was getting the kind of attention that had eluded him in the nearly three decades he spent in prison. Clements was leading a small rally outside the dreary Cook County Criminal Courthouse at 26th and California. The demonstrators were celebrating the fact that Jon Burge, the notorious former Chicago police commander, would be reporting to prison in North Carolina on this particular day to begin a four-and-a-half-year sentence for obstruction of justice and perjury. Burge oversaw the torture of innumerable suspects in south-side police stations in the 1970s and '80s, and the fallout from that scandal helped Clements extricate himself from a life sentence.
Clements, who's 46 and African-American, has a broad face with full eyebrows, a thin mustache, and gapped teeth. He's balding and his back is rounded. He wore a hooded sweatshirt and dress slacks. He has a playful side, but he'd left it at home this morning. He'd alerted media to the rally, and before it began he strode across California Boulevard to meet a Fox Chicago reporter and cameraman.
"I'm an Area Three torture victim of Daniel McWeeny and John McCann," he told the reporter, a young Asian woman.
[ amazing story - ht crime report ]
